The Phantom Scam
by TheTitaniumSerpent
Summary: The truth of what really happened. One-shot. Sight humor, not a trace angst in sight. Warning: this is completely Leroux-based, and those with knowledge of only the ALW-musical, movie(s) or Kay-verse might get a bit confused.


_Notes: As I said, this fic is completely Leroux-based, and those with knowledge of only the ALW-musical, movie(s) or Kay-verse might get a bit confused, although I couldn't resist the one musical-based reference. You can forget the half-masked and muscle-riddled Erik: here's a violent and skeletal and foul-smelling Erik with 'Death's-head'. I have no Beta and English isn't my first language, but I'll correct any linguistic mistakes if you point them out to me._

_Tiny facts: yes, there is a lake under the opera house, yes, men of the upper class used to grossly underestimate those they perceived to be lower in the hierarchy than they were, and yes, I had to fight against my innate desire to make footnotes and references to the source material. Somehow the source list of one book at the end might have been a tad useless. Probably._

* * *

Another string of curses made Philippe grimace, and he shook his head in disgust. Raoul, bless his soul, was using language wholly inappropriate for a good Catholic boy, and a practising Catholic at that. Raoul should not have even known most of those words: Philippe had only heard some of their father's rowdiest companions use those on one of the nights when the hour was late, women and children had long since retired and many bottles had been opened and emptied.

Truth be told, Philippe wasn't quite certain if he ought to be amused, disgusted, horrified, shocked or satisfied. The ungodly language was certainly dreadful, but the situation could have been worse. Raoul was, once again, facing his utter humiliation, and he did not like it one bit. The boy really should have known better than let himself be tangled with a singer, no matter how beautiful she was. Raoul was rich, young and handsome: he could have found himself a lovely young girl from his own class and been happy, but the poor romantic fool had to get enticed by a childhood sweetheart.

Philippe had to admit he himself hadn't suspected anything like this. He'd thought the matter would simply solve itself naturally, when Raoul would loose interest in the girl and settle down with someone proper, and the strange bouts of hysteria Raoul had experienced had shocked him. Papa Daaé had always been an honest and respectable man, even if he was a Swede. Professor Valérius, too, had been a respectable person, and there couldn't have been anything wrong in the blonde, blue-eyed and willowy angel called "Christine" Professor Valérius and his wife helped raise after the passing of the fiddler M Daaé.

Philippe now had to admit he'd underestimated the people involved. In his world, the world he and Raoul had been raised in, men acted and women reacted. When the pretty, innocent-looking and angelic Christine Daaé had looked and acted frightened, Raoul had suspected she'd been afraid for her life or the lives of others, and hadn't bother questioning it at all.

Nobody had questioned how the widowed 'Mamma' Valérius, whom Raoul had believed to be utterly superstitious, quite stupid and as innocent as a child, could afford not only to support herself and Mlle Daaé, but to buy the girl the pretty and expensive domino for the masquerade, her dresses and jewellery, or pay for her education in the conservatory. Raoul had wondered how she'd suddenly developed a divine voice after mere three months of lessons with the notorious 'phantom' or 'angel of music', but hadn't really questioned it, simply believing what he'd been told of a good teacher and special techniques.

Questioning was what it all came down to. Nobody had questioned why the body of the supposedly murdered scene-switcher Buquet had never been delivered to the mortuary: the police had been more interested in calming down the wealthy patrons and their lady wives than the corpse of a sober and sensible but poor worker who'd ended up hung by a rope which had also mysteriously disappeared. Nobody had questioned the supposed murder, which provided delicious air of mystery and gossip, with a victim from a conveniently different social class. And none had given a second thought to the fact that the people involved were professional actors and scoundrels, and the supposedly dead Buquet had conveniently walked off himself and vanished to wait for his orders.

With a murder accredited to his name, MM. Richard and Moncharmin had conveniently accused the supposed 'phantom' for the chandelier which fell and killed M. Moncharmin's concierge and injured many others. Again, the victim was from a lower class and had been of little consequence to important people, and the police hadn't bothered asking the previous managers about the chandelier, though Poligny had warned Richard and Moncharmin of the attachments being old and frayed and in need of maintenance. Instead of taking the blame for the damage, the new managers had shifted the blame to the 'phantom'.

The entire phenomenon of the 'phantom' had been ridiculous from the start. Had M. le commissaire Mifroid been a bit more suspicious, he'd have questioned people and found out how most of the sightings had been made by aforementioned scene-shifter Buquet, Mme Giry or her daughter, Little Meg Giry: and nobody really questioned the exotic 'Persian' who roamed around the opera house. The tricks the 'phantom' had played had truly been too much for simply one man: they weren't too much when the phantom was aided and assisted by a few convenient helpers, who took part in keeping up the legend of the phantom, and so the managers had kept on paying 20 000 Francs every month.

When Raoul had first met Christine, she'd been shocked and frightened, but certainly not by this 'Erik': it was Raoul himself who had shocked her. A besotted and nosy aristocratic boy could so very easily disrupt the group's convenient scheme at the opera.

Raoul had questioned Christine's ring, but had blindly trusted her feeble explanations when she'd promised him her love and loyalty, conveniently directing his attention away from the ring, which indicated that the former Mlle Daaé was, in fact, firmly married to another man, the man who bore the name of Erik. The paper Raoul was clutching was the proof of the marriage taking place. The three months Mlle Daaé had supposedly 'known' the so-called 'angel of music' had been the three months she'd been 'Mme angel of music'.

From what Raoul and Philippe had gathered, Erik's group had decided to target Raoul when he had refused to leave Christine alone, despite her initial requests. And so poor Raoul had begun seeing mysterious glowing eyes (which he'd shot at, the poor idiot!) and dark shapes hanging from Apollo's lyre. The Persian and Christine both had told him fabulous stories about some house by the lake under the opera: the lake was certainly there, but a house there had never been. Instead nobody questioned who lived in the flat next to Mme Valérius: the doors between the rooms had been carefully concealed, and so Mlle Christine Daaé had entered through the door of 'Mamma' Valérius, but exited through a hidden door to live her life as Madame Christine, the wife of a deformed M. Erik.

There was no questioning the love between the living skeleton called Erik and his young wife. People often spoke of the 'smell of death' that accompanied the phantom, but Philippe suspected that a phantom who smelled so foul all the time would have gotten discovered and caught much sooner by someone with a sharp nose. The terrible smell could easily be applied and almost as easily removed with some water and soap. The deformity of his body was an undeniable fact, and there was no doubt the skeletal and tall figure with glowing yellow eyes haunting the opera had been terrifying, but Christine Daaé had adored him all the same, and the man‒ for he truly was a man and not a ghost ‒ had been a true genius who worshipped the ground his wife walked upon. More than that, they both shared music in their hearts and souls, which was more than could be said for poor Raoul, who appreciated music but could never live for it.

There had been clever trap-doors and tunnels, though Erik had built many of those trap-doors with the assistance of this so-called 'Persian' and M. Buquet, who'd both been well paid for their work and had profited of it every time the managers paid the monthly 20 000 Francs. Some of the tunnels were leftovers from the Commune, easily used for their purposes, others simple make-believe, and only a few built for purpose.

The managers had never questioned just why Mme Giry was such a good a pick-pocket with the 20 000 Francs: the old box-keeper in a dingy bonnet and a dress that was so worn it was loosing the black dye who could easily slip the envelope into a pocket could just as easily slip it out. The silly woman had been an intelligent human being used to being underestimated by men, and the managers who bowed and scraped and walked backwards to protect the envelope containing the 20 000 Francs never paid attention to Little Giry with her light toes and even lighter fingers.

When Christine vanished from the stage, Raoul had whined about her foolish decision to sing for one more night, and hadn't bothered to question why and how Christine could be snatched so suddenly and without a sound. He never thought the girl had expected it, placed herself carefully and went willingly.

The managers had panicked: Raoul had added to the panic by talking about a phantom inside the opera, and so the Commissary M. Mifroid had sent Raoul away and had the police search the opera. Raoul had met with the so-called 'Persian' outside, and never questioned why the man never went by his real name and used only his nationality instead: he underestimated the dark-skinned and exotic man utterly. The man had 'rescued' and delivered Christine for Raoul and so Raoul had delivered Christine to his house to 'protect her' from the phantom, who'd obviously wanted to steal away the pretty and innocent singer.

It hadn't taken Christine much convincing the send Raoul away to assist in the capture of the supposed fiendish phantom, and Raoul had left Christine in the care of his servants before dashing heroically off. Christine, meanwhile, had let in the men of the group: the skeletal but intelligent Erik, the exotic Persian and the scene-shifter Buquet. They'd easily bound and gagged the servants and emptied the manor-house of valuables: silverware, jewellery, valuable weapons and lighter works of art all carried off into a wagon which soon disappeared into darkness, creaking the music of a burglar's night with its heavy-laden wheels.

Mme Giry and Little Meg had quite likely assisted in packing up the homes of Erik, Christine and Mme Valérius, and after the group had met somewhere, they'd divided their loot and arranged to meet again somewhere safe in the future.

Commissary Mifroid had been livid when he'd learned he'd been chasing a ghost with the hints from Raoul while the true culprits robbed the de Chagny family blind and fled with the money from the opera and a large portion of the de Chagny fortune. Philippe could have warned Raoul that at least some of Mifroid's outrage was pretence, but Raoul had humbly paid off the Commissary as well as the managers for their trouble and silence. Avoiding scandal was only sensible: if the word got out how a group of foreigners and women had cheated Vicomte de Chagny, he'd have been a laughing stock. And worse, someone might have questioned the death of Comte Philippe de Chagny.

Philippe had opposed the union between Raoul and Christine because of her birth, but it'd been a sensible thing to do. Christine wouldn't have been fully accepted and approved by Raoul's peers: she'd have always been the poor little gold-digger, and she never would have been able to sing and preform. In the end Raoul, who'd feared Philippe's influence over him, had decided he himself should become the next Comte de Chagny sooner rather than later, considering Philippe had no legal heirs, while Raoul could already see the children Christine would bear him, and so he'd murdered his older brother and blamed it on the 'phantom'. The police had accepted it: the gang of thieves had obviously murdered Philippe, the Comte de Chagny to cover up their crime. Raoul's money had increased their willingness to believe it.

Philippe smirked. Raoul had ordered his trusted servants to pack his bags: he'd leave the country. There was no shortage of blond-haired and blue-eyed pretty girls in the world, and there would be plenty poorer ones who'd be willing to use the name of Christine in exchange of the additional name of "Comtesse de Chagny" and a lot of money. If her voice wasn't as angelic, it'd be accredited to trauma and being rusty, and many would consider it rude to ask the poor girl to sing after such traumatic events.

Raoul was planning to hire someone to write 'the truth', perhaps in the form of a story to be published in the newspapers. In it Raoul would be presented as the hero, Christine as the virtuous damsel in distress, and Erik as the monster ultimately defeated. There would probably be something dramatic, like a threat of explosives and a scene with the hero almost drowning in a dastardly and devious trap laid by the monster while the virginal heroine begged for the life of her love. They'd find someone from Persia willing to call himself 'Persian': people rarely paid attention to an exotic foreigner past the strange outfit and skin colour, and few would question if the 'Persian' was really the same 'Persian' who'd roamed in the opera. Time and money would do the rest, and in the meantime the new Comte de Chagny had time to find himself a wife, or perhaps tell everyone that the Swedish-born Christine had decided to leave the country, utterly traumatized.

The opera house did have a phantom, Philippe thought ruefully, although it was largely Raoul'd fault. Ah well, he'd be a much more polite phantom than the last one: he had no need for money, and a gentleman would never rattle the windows or frighten the performers. He had access to any of the boxes and if, by chance, he wanted to take a peek... or two... into the dressing-rooms of the ballerinas, then none would be wiser. It was a pity his arrangement with Sorelli was naturally over, but he'd be able to enjoy her aesthetic beauty... without paying for it. And the beauty of plenty of other dancers as well, he thought ruefully as he walked through the wall towards Sorelli's dressing-room.

And on a ship bound for the new world was a cabin, and in that cabin was a bed, and in that bed were two passionately entwined figures gasping in pleasure with angelic voices, and one of the voices moaned: "Oh, Erik!"


End file.
